Barry Tompkins: This Giants' team was family

Bay Area sportscaster Barry Tompkins sits in a restaurant on Monday, Aug. 22, 2011, in Fairfax, Calif. He began his career in San Francisco in 1965 and has worked for HBO and Fox Sports Net. He is known for his work as a boxing commentator, but has covered football and other sports. He lives nearby in Ross.
(IJ photo/Frankie Frost
Frankie Frost

I'M PRETTY SURE all the confetti from the big parade Wednesday has now been swept up, and as overwhelming a ride as it was for the San Francisco Giants through the month of October, everyone has now gone back to concern about paying the PG&E bill and whether he can find a helper for the Hamburger Helper to get a family through to next week.

What the Giants did — like no other I can remember in years of time spent in locker rooms and press boxes — was galvanize an entire city and turn it into a love-fest that hasn't been seen in these parts since a summer back in the '60s that any of us worth his salt who experienced it doesn't remember.

For years the Giants' clubhouse was the private sanctum of Barry Bonds. Probably the most respected guy I ever met who had no friends on the team. They loved his baseball skills, and abhorred his "Which Barry Bonds will show up today" attitude. It was no fun.

In 2010, the Giants did the seemingly impossible. They did something that hadn't been done by the team in 59 years. They won the whole thing. That bunch of self-proclaimed misfits was just that. Aubrey Huff had already developed a reputation as a clubhouse cancer in his previous stops, but winning changed all that. Behind the movie star smile, Pat Burrell could be testy and uncooperative. By season's end Brian Wilson's act had grown old. Tim Lincecum was young and sometimes immature and pouty. Winning the World Series was great, but it was like a family that can keep it together and have fun on Thanksgiving but doesn't communicate with one another the rest of the year.

But this year was different. This team was different. And, while the results were the same, the difference was that it was Thanksgiving dinner every day.

The clubhouse leaders were now Matt Cain, Buster Posey and Angel Pagan and they did it with a quiet authority. Add to that mix the midseason arrival of Hunter Pence who turned out to be the Elmer Gantry of this bunch, and the presence of Sergio Romo — the Energizer Bunny who (sometimes to a fault) keeps going and going and going. Lincecum might have retreated a bit from his Cy Young years, but he's a grown-up now and it showed. The rest of the starting pitching staff — Cain, Madison Bumgarner, Ryan Vogelsong and Barry Zito — were as matter-of-fact off the mound as on it. Pablo Sandoval, Brandon Crawford and Brandon Belt played the game with the joy of Little Leaguers, and when Marco Scutaro joined the team he defined the motivational term, "Do as I do."

It was commonplace to see Latin- and American-born players gathered around a domino game together. It doesn't happen in many clubhouses in baseball. Everybody truly liked everybody — you just don't see it around the league. The manager had the players' respect and it was a two-way street. That doesn't often happen in Major League Baseball.

They were a bunch of puppies who turned a game that had become a multibillion dollar business back into a game again. They weren't supposed to be good enough to do what they did, but they did.

One East Coast writer criticized AT&T, saying it was Disneyland not a baseball park. The writer added that you don't go to a baseball game to eat a crab sandwich and a plate of garlic fries. You're not supposed to dress up in animal hats, know the words to every song played on the scoreboard between innings, or know all the moves to the "Gangnam Style" video. That's not baseball.

True. And what those 25 guys did this past month wasn't baseball either. It was something way beyond that. And Wednesday there were more than a million people who attested to it.